NISC, 


What Business has a 


Business Man with 


Foreign Missions? 


BY 


REV. S. M. ZWEMER 
Fidei 


Board of Foreign Missions, R. C. A. 
25 E. 22d St.. New York 





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What Business has a Business Man 


With Foreign Missions. 
Rev. S. M. Zwemer, D.D. 


HE word business comes from the Anglo-Saxon, 
byzig which means active, diligent ; and the fact 
that the term man-of-business means what it does 

and only that, speaks volumes regarding the character 
of our age. Other professions may have leisure, brook 
delays, or be sedentary in character. The man of busi- 
ness is always on the go. The commercial world has no 
place for the careless, dull, indolent, listless talker or 
idler. Push and Pull are written on every door. Com. 
petition is keen, enterprise lively, advertisement startling 
and ambition world-wide. Now the one great and only 
business of the Church is missions, and from the nature 
of modern business and the character of Foreign Mis- 
sions, two things are very evident. ‘To impress them on 
you is strictly business and will not take five minutes of 
your time. 

I, YOUR BUSINESS IS CONNECTED WITH FOREIGN MIs- 
SIONS AND YOU ARE INDEBTED TO THEM. This is true 
whether you are a Christian or not, and whether you 
believe in converting the heathen or consider the enter- 
prise Quixotic and hopeless. Whatever branch of finance 
or trade you are engaged in, I challenge you to read up 
its history and you will find yourself face to face with 
Foreign Missions. There are no banks or drafts in 
heathendom. There is no partnership in Mohammedan 
lands, for no one trusts his neighbor. The history of 
architecture, drainage and transportation all land you in 
the story of medieval missions, Modern commerce is 


1681 


4 


the fruit of Christianity no less than modern civilization. 
The fact that London and New York, and not Pekin or 
Constantinople, are the financial pillars of the world, is. 
due to Columba and Augustin. Peschel, the great 
geographer, said: ‘‘Geography, commerce and the 
spread of the Christian religion have singularly enough 
a common history.’ Missions not only promote but 
create commerce. Ipecac and quinine and india-rubber 
were discovered by missionaries; the first steamships on 
African lakes were built for missions; ploughs were first 
sold in Turkey by American missionaries; Yankee 
clocks have followed Yankee school-teachers from China 
to Peru. Commercial facts like these are so numerous 
and novel that I commend to you their perusal in books 
like Warneck’s ‘‘ Modern Missions and Culture,” or the 
Ely Volume on ‘‘ Missions and Science.” 

You owe adebt to Foreign Missions as a business 
man. The heathen have a claim on you at least six 
daysa week. Some of the indispensables of your lunch 
and the comforts of your home are the result of heathen 
labor. And no modern business man denies that he 
owes a duty to hisemployees. Many of your costly im- 
ports are brought to the wharves by heathen slave-labor. 
Who gathered and dried the tea in India, Ceylon and 
China? Who toiled at the loomsin Persia and Afghan- 
istan to fill your tapestry department? Did the negroes 
who carried your ivory to the coast ever hear of your 
Saviour? You say a// business men are not interested 
in billiard-balls or piano-keys. Granted. But look at 
your desk. Whence came the tools of your profession? 
Your bottle of mucilage and your box of stamps owes 
a debt to the Arabs of Hadramaut. Youreraser and the 
handle of your fountain-pen came from South America, 
the neglected continent. The graphite of your pencil 
from dark Siberia, and your finest grade of ink from 
China. If you are in the drug or grocer trade look down 


5 


the list of oils, balsams, gums and barks and see what 
you owe to heathen lands. In the business world no 
man liveth to himself. A famine at the antipodes 
changes stock in Wall Street. The occupation of the 
New Hebrides by missionaries lowered quotations on 
arrow-root. Livingstone’s last journey opened half a 
million markets for piece-goods. The value of exports 
and imports of Hawaii for a single year are twelve times 
as much as the total sum spent from the beginning until 
the end by foreign missionaries in evangelizing and 
civilizing its people. War destroys markets and has 
closed more open doors than opened closed ones. But 
the missionary is the pioneer of commerce and the 
herald of civilization. If you want a wider market send 
out more missionaries. The man who reads a primer 
wants a shirt and his wife a broom. Uganda will soon 
import American carpet-sweepers. It ought not to take 
a business man long to see that missions pay, even in 
the lowest sense of the word. 

Now while you profit by this world-market you can 
not hide from yourself the fact that much of this wealth 
costs the lives of men for whom Christ died, and that 
they have died practically in your service, never having 
heard the Blessed Name. Here lies a great responsi- 
bility for business men, and they should show to the 
world that they have astake in the greatest business 
enterprise and the most stupendous Trust of the twentieth 
century—Foreign Missions. 

It, FOREIGN MISSIONS NEEDS YOU, BECAUSE YOU ARE 
A BUSINESS MAN. When the world was half asleep and 
wholly drowsy, in the Middle Ages, monks were mission- 
aries Nowitis daybreak everywhere and monks are 
out-of-date. We want business men for the business. 
There are certain words of David, oft quoted, about 
the King’s business requiring haste. They were alie to 
begin with, and, as appliedto Christ’s Kingdom are only 


6 


partly true and wholly inadequate. The King’s business 
requires a great many things more imperatively, than 
haste. His work requires the very qualities in its 
servant, which you possess, if you are a successful busi- 
ness man. Capital, caution, confidence, attention, appli- 
cation, accuracy, method, punctuality, dispatch—these 
are the elements for efficient conduct of business of any 
sort. They are the very elements that have built up and 
would to-day rejuvenate the business at the old stand of 
Foreign Missions. 

This business of Foreign Missions is sorely in meee 
of less criticism and more capital. You can supply it. 
It is acknowledged on the Best Authority to be the most 
paying investment inthe world. Zen thousand per cent. 
(or an hundred fold) is guaranteed; and has been paid 
to investors again and again. The enterprise of carry- 
ing the gospel to every creature is older, has more 
branch-offices, and covers a wider territory than the 
Standard Oil Company and furnishes better light and 
warmth to humanity. Why are business men afraid to 
sink capitalin this Divine Trust? But it is more than 
mere capital that the business needs. orezgn Missions 
necd you, yourself. A business enterprise needs business 
men to direct it, to extend it, and to carry it on. Some 
of the most successful missions were inaugurated by 
laymen or business men. There is to-day a wider and 
louder call for consecrated business men in the Foreign 
Mission field than there ever was before. The whole 
- problem of zxdustrial-misstons, which lies back of that 
other problem of obtaining a self-supporting native 
church, will have to be solved by men of business. The 
cause of Foreign Missions needs the help of business 
men in its administration ; business men who will give 
their time and talent to this important work and make it 
their business to do the Lord’s work in a business-like 
way. 


7 


When the Master walked outside of Capernaun one 
day His eye fell on a business man named Matthew, sit- 
ting in the midst of account-books and vouchers, at the 
receipt of custom. And He said unto him, follow Me 
And this business man left all rose up and followed Him. 


** Beloved, let us love so well, 
Our work shall still be better for our love 
And still our love be sweeter for our work.” 


Christ Himself had no higher word by which to 
designate His mission on earth and His passion for a lost 
world than the word that joins you to Him asa fellow- 
craftsman at the sametask. ‘‘ Wist ye not that I must be 
about My Father's BUSINESS?” You are a business man 
and I want to ask you a straightforward question : Who 
is your Father? And what is His Business? 


BAHREIN, 1901. 


The Man of Business 


in account with 


Foreign Missions 





DR. CR. 
“The Year 
of my 
redeemed” | ‘‘How much owest 
Isa. 63: 4. thou?” Luke | 16 5 
*“Qwe no man 
anything *’ Rom. | 13 | 8 
**| am Debtor both: 


to the Greeks 
and to the bar- 


barians.” Rom. | ¢ | 14 
** Their debtors 
they are.” Rom. | 5 | 29 
“| will pay my 
vows now.” Pe. | 16 ig 





We are unprofi- | 
table servants, we | 
have done that 
which was our 
duty to do.” 


Luke | 17 | 10 || Luke| 17 | 10 | 








